How To Be Inspired, 2005

Most of us know to experience occasional glimpses of inspiration, but few of us know to access that state each and every day, and build our life upon inspiration. According to Nick Williams perpetual inspiration is quite possible, when we know how to align ourselves to it. Nick shows that inspiration is a phenomenon, an evolutionary force and can be a constant compassion in our life’s journey when we know how to overcome our fears and resistance.

We can succeed through inspiration, not sacrifice. Whether you are seeking a more inspired life, or already live one, How To Be Inspired is a year-book of 54 glorious nuggets, insights and practical suggestions to lift every soul.

Why I wrote this book

Growing up, no-one ever encouraged me to follow my heart, to do what inspired me or to discover what I loved. I used to believe that if I got inspired, I should go lie down for half an hour and let it pass. Then in 1996, I came across the following quotation from Patanjali, the founder of the yoga sutras, that he wrote in the second century bc:

“When you work only for yourself, or for your own personal gain, your mind will seldom rise above the limitations of an undeveloped personal life. But when you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break your bonds: your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”

When I first read this, it awoke something in me, and seemed to touch something at the very heart of my being. Those words fortified me to get the courage to quit my corporate job in 1989, and my life has been a “living experiment” – applying those words to my own life and work and seeing what happened.

How to be Inspired is the distillation of what I came to understand as the anatomy of inspiration, what it is, how it works, why we don’t follow our inspiration and how we can get back on track with our inspiration.

It was also my first outing of “writing short”, writing in short essay form and learning to distil ideas without over-simplifying them. It was a new chapter of my own maturity and confidence in writing.

So I wrote this book to:

Help you understand the power of your inspiration and access it regularly

Help you understand the anatomy of inspiration as the fuel for your own self-leadership

Enable you to understand why you being inspired enables others find their inspiration